After Mayor Alan Corlin made a valiant but lonely and losing attempt to professionalize the coming Utility Users Tax campaign last night, the City Council resembled a kitten playing with a ball of yarn when it became deeply entangled in trying to demystify and defend the dense, newly downsized mixed-use ordinance.
Both measures passed by wide margins. But a funny thing happened to each on its way to victory. They took very different paths to approval.
Wide neighborhood support is presumed for both decisions. There was less than a whimper of community comment on either. Not one person spoke on the Utility Users Tax. It is further presumed that previously noisy activists are convinced they scored a major win with the redrawn mixed-use ordinance because hardly any showed up in Council Chambers.
Indeed, there were twice as many developers as residents (8 to 4) seeking relief from the Council on the mixed-use ordinance, but the builders’ pleas largely were ignored.
Two Choices
How to promote the next campaign for selling the repackaging of the modernized Utility Users Tax set off a brief but brisk fight between the mayor and four colleagues who disagreed with him. Simultaneously strident and articulate, Mr. Corlin flared up and stiffly pushed back just asthe rest of the Council was sailing, unperturbed, to an easy decision.
But this disagreement was as tiny as a bee compared to the marathon the five Council members staged before saying yes to the mixed-use ordinance. Somehow, they spent 3½ hours elaborately, flamboyantly and repetitively declaring how much they agreed on. The several smallish areas of barely discernable discord drained the last drops of energy out of the meeting.
Exercise in Truncation
When the session in Council Chambers mercifully broke up at midnight, there was a rumor that City Hall was offering a cash prize to any resident who could clearly explain the mixed-use ordinance in 100 sentences or less.
By the time the Council finally came to a formal concurrence on the minute points, most customers had been driven away.
What started as an evening of bright promise for two marquee subjects of strong community interest soon descended
into a display of debilitating rhetoric.
By devoting so many hours to the often arcane, detail-laden mixed-use ordinance, the City Council bored the community so completelyly that at the end, the audience fell just short of a quorum for one game of Solitaire.
A Serene Start
They started out relatively smoothly.
At issue was how hard of a sell would be required between now and next spring to convince voters to affirm their assumed support for all aspects of the Utility Users Tax.
In a sudden clash of rival philosophies, the City Council, by a 4 to 1 vote, asserted that city staffers are better suited than a public opinion research team to survey voters’ feelings about modernizing the UUT before it is scheduled to go on next April’s ballot.
During discussions on the dais, the mayor traditionally speaks after all other Council members. The first four Councilpersons were in harmony on this one. They all nodded when the city staff vowed that its small group was capable of conducting an aggressive, successful campaign by thoroughly canvassing and educating the community even though no staffer ever has done this before.
Residential Resentment
Speaking for the majority, Vice Mayor Carol Gross maintained that there were at least two good reasons for going with the City Hall crew, aside from saving money. She said adamantly that residents would resent an intrusion from outside pollsters. Further, Ms. Gross said that such a scheme would look to voters as if City Hall were trying to manipulate them.
This aroused the articulate and vehement Mr. Corlin. He argued strenuously that it was a miscalculation of staggering proportions for the Council to choose untrained, unqualified hometown amateurs over professionals — even if they are from out of town — for such a delicate and crucial task.
Expensive Defeat
After glancing at the UUT revenue sheet, the mayor said the decision to entrust the untested could be a $5 million mistake for City Hall if the UUT loses on Election Day.
“The UUT will be the quintessential issue in Culver City the next five months,” Mr. Corlin said, adding dramatically: “If it does not pass, it will change the face of Culver City.”
Councilman Steve Rose, the mayor’s friend and frequent — but not fulltime — ally, echoed the assertions of Ms. Gross, about resident resentment and the appearance of manipulation. Since the voters, a little unexpectedly, supported the UUT overwhelmingly at the polls three years ago, Mr. Rose said there is no reason to suspect that popular support has softened.
Scant Discord
The irony of the Council debate over misty details in the mixed-use ordinance is that it probably set a record for the longest one-night discussion of a single subject.
Somehow the Council spun several minor disagreements into a free-swinging oratorical contest that lasted longer than back-to-back motion pictures, longer than a professional football game. It also was 3 hours and 27 minutes longer than the Gettysburg Address.
These historic wayposts did not begin to slow up, much less intimidate, the City Council.
Key Numbers
Going in, all five of them generally concurred that the proposed density level of 35 condo units per acre, down from 65, and the standard height limit of 45 feet were acceptable. (When the ordinance is adopted, both restrictions will be accompanied by numerous exceptions that may allow an imaginative builder to think he has landed in paradise.)
In a departure from casual weekly practice, Councilman Scott Malsin launched the dais discussion of the proposed ordinance by reading an eight-minute prepared speech,. This was the first hint that a lengthy rhetorical workout loomed.
A Work of Urban Art
For their part, Community Development Director Sol Blumenfeld and his staff assembled a masterpiece of an ordinance. It is so precise, so exquisitely detailed, so prescient in its anticipation of changing circumstances that someday it may hang in the Culver City equivalent of the Louvre.
This, however, turned out to be a double-sided dagger last night. The Council members tilled the fertile soil of Mr. Blumenfeld’s dense document as if it were a ritzy resort for rhetoricians.
Two Points of Departure
Ever so slightly, members debated two fairly obscure notions, topics of interest mainly to wonks, both related to Community Benefits:
Exactly which Community Benefits should be certified — they agreed on four — and which bonuses are targeted for which neighborhoods of Culver City.
Community Benefits is a spunky concept that would allow a builder to exceed the newly lowered height and density limits if, in exchange, he would promise to construct, for example, an open space area or a day-care center, as long as the project is deemed to enrich the community in a payback sort of way.
The Final Four
Near midnight, just before the audience would morph into a pumpkin, the Council finally agreed a builder could choose from sharply shortened list of four designated Community Benefits:
Open space, metered public parking, streetscaping and underwriting underground utilities.
Councilman Gary Silbiger fought hard to have three other options included, green building, affordable housing and job creations. But all were voted down.